How Netflix is helping parents get kids to bed (at a reasonable hour) on New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve can be a real challenge for parents. When little kids find about the excitement associated with the holiday, they don’t want to miss out on the late-night fun.

Because staying up until at least midnight is the entire point of New Year’s Eve, kids who know about it will almost surely resist going to bed at an appropriate hour on Dec. 31. But a cranky kid who didn’t get enough sleep is no fun on New Year’s Day; plus, parents often want to enjoy their own adult celebrations. So what’s a grown-up to do?

That’s where Netflix comes to the rescue. Yep, for the fourth year in the row, the streaming service is offering a solution for this common holiday problem.

Beginning Dec. 26, Netflix has made available several New Year’s Eve countdowns featuring cartoon characters from different shows. These videos are around 3 minutes long and each includes a 10-second countdown to “midnight,” and the best part is, they’re available on-demand! That means midnight can come any time you want it to, whether that’s at your kids’ standard bedtime, or maybe a little bit later. After all, it is a holiday. Check out a preview of the fun countdowns below:

What a great idea! This year’s countdowns feature characters from the following Netflix kids’ shows: “Trollhunters,” “All Hail King Julien,” “Skylanders Academy,” “Puffin Rock,” “Word Party,” “Beat Bugs,” “Pororo,” “Larva” and “True and the Rainbow Kingdom.”

To access these invaluable countdowns, go to the “Kids” section on Netflix and choose the celebratory 2018 icon. You can also find them by searching for “countdown.”

Paired with some Welch’s sparkling grape juice and maybe some noisemakers, your kiddos will have a great New Year’s Eve celebration all their own! This sounds like the perfect parenting hack to ring in the new year. Even if it’s only 8 p.m., your kids can happily go to bed knowing they didn’t miss out on a thing. Don’t worry, I won’t tell!